Medical Cannabis (Access) Bill

Debate between James Daly and Elliot Colburn

Friday 10th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Elliot Colburn]

I totally agree. It might be of some use to the House if I read a little more of my constituent’s reflections, as he went on to say:

“Then came along the introduction of Drug Science and their Project Twenty 21, this gave me the ability to seek professional help, to be able to get a prescription to legal Cannabis flower to which I vape as a preventative and when needed as a pain killer. I still get migraines but luckily now I have a medicinal way to cope and quell most of the side effects, literally giving me my life back.

Although this does sound like a fairy tale, with a happy ending, there is a darker side to this.

Currently the expense and experience of being with a private clinic and private dispensary/pharmacy is quite strained, adding anxiety and stress into the situation. We rely on the ability of both the clinic’s and Dispensary’s to keep us in prescription which does not happen and is quite literally floored. Medication is imported into the UK, its very often caught up in customs and the added issues with Covid has broken supply chains.

Dispensary’s are often out of product and the clinics are not kept abreast of this so many re-writes of prescriptions have to happen and thus costing time to get the needed medication and cost for re-writes. This all breaks down to us the patients being without medication, sometimes up to a month, putting us back at square one (prescriptions have to be written monthly).

On top of the supply and demand issues, quality is also something that has been with issue, many reporting to Yellow Card unusable medication due to sub-standard product and often mould that cannot be used – with no way of a refund or quick turnaround of a re-stock.

Without a shadow of a doubt this would never happen under the NHS but as we have no other choice in the matter its either suffering under private clinics or unfortunately breaking the law and turning back to the black market.

There are many thousands like me in this position, I’m but a single drop in a large ocean of people with similar experiences, I would like to draw your attention to this so you may air this as unfortunately the situation is not getting better. I understand that the primary concern is for children with epilepsy though there is a much larger footprint of people benefiting from medical cannabis and this should whole heartedly be pulled into the NHS to better control and support patients.

I would be grateful if you could keep this all”—

he refers to all of us in this place—

“in the back of your mind so you have some real world information from one of your local constituents of the big picture surrounding medical cannabis, it’s time for this to be pushed forward as it was supposed to have been back in 2019…

Luckily medical cannabis has given me my life back, I hope others can benefit in the future but it needs to be under the protective umbrella of the NHS.”

I thank that constituent for sharing what was obviously a harrowing story, and for permitting me to raise it on the Floor of the House this afternoon. I am sure colleagues will agree that that was incredibly brave, so I am very grateful to that person for allowing me to do so.

We have heard many constituents’ stories during the debate, although we have explored just two elements of them—childhood epilepsy and the migraines that my constituent has suffered. I would like quickly to bring in one more, which is the exploratory research being conducted on the use of CBD for fibromyalgia and other treatment-resistant neuropathic pain.

I know the suffering that those conditions can cause, especially when there is so little known or understood about them; I have many family members who have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia or similar conditions. Again, I have seen the benefits that CBD can bring, but I agree with colleagues about the need for robust research. I do not think it is a question of whether we will get there, but a question of how. I hope that the Minister has been able to take on board the experience—

[James Daly]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the law is very clear that medical professionals can prescribe non-licensed cannabis products, but the question is why clinical commissioning groups are not funding that? That is what we have to address, to force them to fund it.

[Elliot Colburn]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. I have experience of working in what we might call a super CCG, which is now an integrated care system, looking at commissioning at a strategic level across six London boroughs, which is by no means a small footprint—we commissioned services for more than 1 million people when I was there, including for four of London’s biggest hospitals. I agree with the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), that practitioners were screaming from the rooftops that they wanted to be able to give such prescriptions and, indeed, felt confident about that. I will not say that they all were—a lot of the colleagues I used to work with in the NHS were not—but a significant amount were confident. From a commissioning perspective, when we were sat in our offices in Wimbledon, talking about commissioning services and looking at the health of the six south-west London boroughs we were tasked with dealing with, there was a clear sense of nervousness and even confusion among commissioners. That obviously needs to change and there needs to be some way to support commissioners to make the positive decisions to deliver the funding. I hope that when the Minister responds we will hear a little bit about what the Government can do about that.

In bringing my remarks to a close, I emphasise that the constituent experiences we have heard about in this debate, including from the constituent who was kind enough to allow me to read out their story, have been profound. That should be in the back of all our minds when we discuss this issue, because there are real-life implications that we do not always see when we pore over the details of text. I look forward to hearing from the Minister what we can do to unlock some of the issues we have explored in this debate.